The Materials Research Facilities Network is a nationwide partnership of NSF supported MRSEC centers designed to provide support to researchers in the broad area of Materials Research in academic, government and industrial laboratories around the world. NSF MRSEC centers are geographically spread throughout the United States at major research universities which greatly enhances the ability for researchers from other institutions to gain access to the wide array of instrumentation and facilities presently available.

Access to advanced research instrumentation and facilities is widely recognized as a critical aspect for future US competitiveness. In the 2007 National Academies Press report, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm”, this was recognized with a specific recommendation and call for action to sustain and strengthen the nation’s traditional commitment to research and to provide for future economic growth. Implicit in this suggested course of action is the need to educate both graduate and undergraduate students in the operation and potential uses of state of the art instrumentation. This will not only enhance the educational experience but greatly enable future research activities.  Thus, the MRFN is a response by the MRSEC program to the National Academies report, "Midsize Facilities: Infrastructure for Materials Research", which takes advantage of existing nationally funded instrumentation infrastructures, such as the NNIN (www.nnin.org/) by complementing their initiatives.

The goal of the Facilities Network is to provide users with unprecedented access to instruments, techniques and collaborators in order to enhance their studies of the synthesis, characterization and theory of materials. A major focus of the Facilities Network is to encourage the study of materials and to enable as wide a diversity of researchers access to their cutting-edge tools. The members of the MRSEC Facilities Network are the University of California, Santa Barbara; University of Massachusetts Amherst; University of Minnesota; University of Wisconsin Madison; Princeton University; Washington University; University of Maryland; University of Pennsylvania; Northwestern; Yale; Carnegie Mellon; and Brown University. Users are invited to submit short proposals requesting access to the state-of-the-art instruments and techniques, and to the highly skilled staff. Limited financial support is available to supplement both the user fees as well as travel costs at all network partners with preference given to undergraduate and minority institutions.

Please direct any questions or comments to mrfn-info @ mrl.ucsb.edu


MRFN Safety - For safety information, please visit individual MRSEC websites.

All funded users are encouraged to use the following statement of acknowledgement:

"We would like to acknowledge the Materials Research Facilities Network (MRFN) program at (NAME OF UNIVERSITY, CITY), funded by National Science Foundation grant (DMR # FROM CENTER), for providing instrumentation support used to obtain materials characterization of samples"

unless otherwise directed by the specific MRSEC. Each participant MRFN site will have its own distinct grant number, which can be obtained by directly contacting the P.I.

MRFN Coordinator

Anika A. Odukale
MRFN Coordinator 
Postdoctoral Research Associate, UCSB Materials Research Laboratory

Fax: (805) 893-8797
Rm. 3111, Materials Research Building
University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5121
Email: aodukale@mrl.ucsb.edu

 MRFN Directors

Professor Craig Hawker MRFN Director Director of UCSB Materials Research Laboratory Phone: (805) 893-7161 Fax: (805) 893-8797 Rm. 3005, Materials Research Building University of California at Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5121 Email: hawker@mrl.ucsb.edu	Professor Juan J. de Pablo UWM MRSEC Director and Howard Curler Distinguished Professor Phone: 608/262-7727 Fax: 608/262-5434 University of Wisconsin Madison 3018 Engineering Hall 1415 Engineering Drive Madison, WI 53706-1691 Email: depablo@engr.wisc.edu
Professor Timothy Lodge UMN Facilities Coordinator and Director of UMN Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Phone: (612) 625-0877 Fax:   Rm. 235, Smith Hall 207 Pleasant Street SE, Universty of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN 55455 Email: lodge@umn.edu	Professor Thomas P. Russell UMass Facilities Coordinator and Director of UMass Materials Research Science and Engineering Center Phone: (413)-545-2680 Fax: (413)-577-1510 Room A516, 120 Governors Drive, Conte Research Center University of Massachusetts - Amherst Amherst, MA 01003 Email: russell@mail.pse.umass.edu